Supermarkets and other large, high volume discount stores have become commonplace in modern marketing. In such operations, some traditional functions of the sellers are transferred to the buyers, as in the case of self-service. The success of early supermarkets has led to the adoption of self-service techniques in all large scale food retailing in the United States, and also, but much less extensively, in hardware, variety and drug stores, in some department stores and wholesale operations. While the success of such operations seemed initially attributable to price savings due to operating economies of large retailers, customers, however, like the large assortments these stores offer and the opportunity for inspecting and selecting merchandise without the attentions of salesclerks.
Self-service and self-selection have played a large part in a general reorganization of merchandise within a retail store, including the creation of open display fixtures and shelving that allow the customer to inspect and handle the merchandise. Such open and exposed merchandizing has, however, created, in many large stores, a merchandizing monotony, i.e., numerous long and indistinguishable aisles of shelves overwhelmingly packed with items.
Recently, supermarket shelving policies have contributed to even greater shelf congestion. Many supermarkets now limit the amount of shelf space which they will allocate to certain products, resulting in the battle of feet and inches for shelf space among manufacturers and distributors.
In such an environment, research on consumer buying habits has emphasized the importance of visual impact. An item must be seen if it is to be sold, but seeing is itself a matter of degree, for example, of the intensity of the impression created by a display, and the ability of the customer to identify and separate adjacent displays.
Several techniques have been suggested and used to control the customer's reactions throughout the store and to enhance the appeal of certain products over others. For example, one development has been the increased growth of well-advertised manufacturers' brands, which the consumer will accept upon sight.
Lighting has also become an integral part of merchandizing. General lighting intensities in stores are five or six times greater than lights of a few decades ago. Special lighting techniques are used to emphasize and distinguish certain products over others. Spot lighting of product displays is one technique. Back illumination, i.e., a light source behind a translucent or transparent sign or display, has also been popular, but back illumination usually requires bulky units, not suitable for use in simple shelf displays. Some back illumination techniques have, however, been described for shelves. U.S. Pat. No. 3,248,494, issued Apr. 26, 1966, to Barnes and U.S. Pat. No. 3,086,308, issued Apr. 23, 1963, to Ternouth disclose shelf edge signs for product name and price using back illumination. Various shelf edge lights are also commercially available, such as Shelf Lites.TM. available from Advertising Technologies, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa. These devices require separate, external wiring to electrical sources, separate containers for electrical sources if batteries are used, or structural modification of the conventional molding channel to mount the lighting fixture and provide electrical connection. There remains a need for simple methods for punctuating and dramatizing a product display against the greatly increased general brightness and voluminous open shelving of establishments.